The Swimmer
Director Frank Perry's THE SWIMMER (1968), based on John Cheever's short story, is a contender to be a part of what I call The Great Suburban Angst Dramas. Films that take an unflinching look at the affluent, externally shimmering yet inwardly decrepit folks who share mai-tais at the club while engaging the latest gossip. All in their tennis whites, of course. Other such films in this canon? ORDINARY PEOPLE, AMERICAN BEAUTY, SHOOT THE MOON, THE ICE STORM. All of these films are flawed, but to their very essences understand those who will keep up appearances no matter what, be it the dissolution of their marriages or even the death of their children. Infinite denial. THE SWIMMER predates all of the above films, and is no less trenchant, though a few unfortunate choices keep this film from truly joining such lofty ranks.
Neddy (Burt Lancaster) appears in a sunny meadow, walking towards a sky blue pool in a neighbor's backyard. He was not invited, but is greeted warmly by a husband and wife who wonder where in the heck he's been lately. Another couple drops in and they are similarly pleased to see the swim-trunked clad middle ager with the impressive abdomen and Adonis-like air. The women flirt with him; the men admire him. In one scene, we gather that Neddy had bought into and lived the coveted American Dream. Past tense?
While chatting with the neighbors, he looks out over the valley of their tony Connecticut neighborhood and formulates an intriguing idea: he will swim his way home, pool by pool. His friends laugh when he explains the journey, calling it "the river home", naming it after his wife, even. Neddy has a great love of poetry, saying philosophical things that blow past most of his friends, even quoting Song of Solomon at least twice during this trek.
We meet many more neighbors, including a young girl who used to babysit Neddy's daughters. He convinces her to join him on this unusual aquatic trip, and she opens up to him that she had a childhood crush on him and even once stole one of his shirts. Neddy beams, flatters her. He feels validated in an instant. She shares more personal things. He offers to accompany her to work, to watch over her. She gets a bit creeped out, perhaps mistaking the much older man's attention for lust. She runs away. Neddy is puzzled and saddened but continues on to the next pool.
The clouds darken overhead. Neddy begins to shiver a bit. The trip becomes more hostile. An older woman in the next yard is not at all welcoming; her son, Neddy's friend, had recently died. She scolds him for not visiting him, not even once. Later, a large garden party is filled with faces of recognition. Neddy is far from welcome, and is all but a pariah there. Each exchange with guests (and eventually the hosts) is riddled with tension. What did Neddy do to them? They were obviously once friendly, but something went very wrong.
THE SWIMMER tells little, but we can guess the backstory. Why are the women especially red faced? Spurned mistresses?
Neddy eventually arrives in the backyard of a former lover, Shirley Adams (Janice Rule). She too is hostile, but as the scene plays the tone (and her attitude) shifts from anger to embarrassment to possible forgiveness to pity and resentment. This scene, reportedly directed by Sydney Pollack after Perry and crew suffered those dreaded "creative differences", is vital as it really shows us the depths of Neddy's downfall: he can't recall key events, not those with Shirley, and not those with his own family. Lancaster does some fine work. It becomes clearer that the man perhaps was away in some sort of facility, recovering from a breakdown. On this day he swims home, he thinks perhaps that it is years earlier than it really is. When he finally reaches his ultimate destination, it is one of the most memorably poignant and emotionally resonant scenes I've witnessed in a film.
It's an interesting coincidence that in the same week I watched THE SWIMMER I also saw 2 other films that deal with the sense of loss of relevance: ONE TRICK PONY and BUBBA HO-TEP. Neddy was once the embodiment of American Success (home, family, high powered position) who got distracted and chased the darker impulses. This movie can well be taken as a parable for The Dream itself, its supposedly noble attainment rather often a black hole of broken relationships and regret. Perry and his wife Eleanor's script makes several potent observations, though the film is undermined by Marvin Hamlisch's schmaltzy score and a few scenes that are just ridiculous (such as when Neddy runs with the young girl in slow motion across a field, even jumping over equestrian obstacles!). Some of the heated verbal exchanges in this film also border dangerously on camp melodrama.
Still, THE SWIMMER is well worth seeing for Lancaster's stellar performance (sources state that he considered his work here to be his best) and for the many lacerating themes introduced, perhaps not so familiar in films to 1960s audiences. It is fairly obscure and not the easiest to seek out, but THE SWIMMER is a vivid prism of suburban brokenness, one not easily forgotten. Whenever the temptation to grab a bigger piece of the pie or cry "entitlement" may knock on your door, think on Ned Merrill's last stop, and remember what he finds when he returns home.
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